Strange
by RedneckPlasticFlamingo
Summary: The Avengers had called themselves a team. In the darkest of hours, there had been reason, hope. Purpose. Until two mutants arrived, and had forced them to learn how easily hope can fade. M-MA stories about how the twins ruined the Avengers. (Slash, incest; sexual/dark themes in future chapters. Many pairings.)
1. The End

**A/N: Each chapter of this collection of stories will be a scene or two of impactful things that happened to the Avengers, each in no particular order, but with date and location so they're easy to follow. When I revisit a scene, which I'll do quite a bit, I'll give that chapter a similar title so you can find it easily. (Example: The End I, The End II, The End III...)****  
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**Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers or any of the mutants that may be featured in later chapters of this story. **

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**Prologue - The End**

**February 21st, 2016; Outside Stark Tower, NYC**

CNN News correspondent Whitney Coleman and her team of cameras shoved through a crowd of what seemed like a few hundred New Yorkers, all writhing and clamoring in a soggy heap of umbrellas and wet rain jackets. The sky was dark, overcast with cumulus clouds of grey and strikes of thunder that sent tremors in the city with each rumble they gave in the sky. Only when the 'CNN' came into view on their devices did anyone make room for Coleman's team. Some of the defiant ones would stand their ground, continuing to crane their necks toward the scene at Stark Tower for the few moments they weren't turning over their shoulders to shout profanities at them. The trek to the scene seemed to last for miles under the pounding rainfall, but Coleman's attitude seemed to lift when they reached the mouth of the tower, the middle of the scene.

Standing yards from Coleman's soggy figure in a crowd of news correspondents was Tony Stark in a rain jacket with the hood pulled tightly over his ruffled brown hair. The glow of the arc reactor was ever so visible though the black plastic as he turned to walk away from a bothersome journalist from FOX news who didn't seem to know when enough was enough. She was a woman who stood at about his height and hid her dirty-blond hair under a black umbrella she refused to share with her male counterpart. Something she said through the smirk on her face made Stark stop for a moment in his footsteps. He stood in silence and paid the woman's words the attention they probably didn't deserve. The lines on Stark's face made Coleman feel bad for the billionaire. Stark, who was once so eccentric, he was almost annoying to interview, was now a solemn, brawny, unrecognizable man in the lazy wardrobe of Tony Stark. The billionaire grit his teeth and stormed toward the entrance of the tower just as Coleman took a breath to speak to him.

If it wasn't for the S.H.I.E.L.D agents blocking their paths, each of the reporters probably would have charged after the genius, devices in hand, shouting more questions for him to ignore. Coleman neglected yelling after the Iron Man in favor of examining the pieces she had left to work with. Her eyes landed on the line of agents, the men with stern, stony faces and muscled arms they kept extended to as to block the way of reporters who tried to shove their way though. They all wore suits of black that kept them soaked in the rain that pierced the ground, and Coleman tried not to give their poor choice of wardrobe a second thought as she tugged her raincoat tighter over her chest and turned to interview someone else.

A crowd of people began to pool by the other man in Stark's absence; the man who had been standing beside Stark, taking questions the entire time. The man was reasonably tall, with ebony skin and a black leather coat that matched the patch he wore over an injured eye that had healed long before. He was taking interviews with a stern, level-headed attitude, his hands clasped in front of him, a look of interest on his face as he listened and answered. Coleman should have gone to him first. In the face of tragedy, the director was one of the only people S.H.I.E.L.D. could rely on to keep a level head about himself.

Her team of cameramen at her heels, Coleman weaved through the crowd, bowing her head at the fall of rain, which only seemed to be growing thicker. She came to a spot a few feet in front of the director. A soggy lace of blond was pushed from her eyes by one of her cameramen as she raised the microphone to her lips. "Director Fury. Reporter Whitney Coleman with CNN News," she levelly told the agent. The rest of her team of cameras collected around her, and she was pleased to see they'd acquired the director's full attention. "In the wake of such a terrible war, if anything were to happen next that would put the lives of mankind in further danger, what would you be willing to do to stop it at this point?"

Fury gave a pause, but it wasn't a pause for thought. His mud-brown eye scrutinized Coleman's gaze for a moment as heavy as the rain, and the stone-coldness of his expression didn't quiver in the slightest. "Whitney, right?" Coleman gave a solemn nod and held his gaze with bright hazel eyes. "Well Whitney, you let the folks down at the CNN headquarters know that we at S.H.I.E.L.D would do_ anything_ for the good of humanity. Whether our mission is to relocate the population or to cure the planet of a rampaging disease, we will_ not_ hesitate to get on our feet and make certain that is the first thing we do. Do I make myself clear?"

Coleman strained her eyes. A few dozen yards away at the entrance of the tower, Stark was taking off an expensive pair of shades worth five of her paychecks as he pushed past the tinted glass doors. Steve Rogers gave him a concerned glance as he pulled a tan trench coat over his plaid button-down shirt. He made his way to a crowd of reporters with a tired expression and quick, moving strides into the rain.

Coleman returned her gaze right back to Fury, whose eye was still trained on her, and hadn't left. She dared another glance at Rogers, who had joined an interview with some man with CBS. "And the Avengers?" She asked Fury. Something in the director's face seemed to fall, like concern, or uncertainty. "The Avengers, even with their new additions, are always still the Avengers we trust, correct? Morally, I mean. "

There was a pause. Fury's eyes fell to the ground as the clamor of reporters continued around them. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his trench coat, and for whatever reason, pursed his lips at the side and created a thin line of his ebony-skinned mouth. "At this point... what with all the worldwide damage... the fear and mourning people are going through..." Fury raised his eye from the ground, watching the anticipation drain into the hazel of Coleman's eyes in his pause, "...I'm not so sure the public will be able to handle the truth about the Avengers' mentality."

As he pursed his lips at her, something like guilt shone in his one seal-brown eye. The clamor of the swarming crowd grew twice its former size in volume, shrieks and hollers overpowering the noise of the pounding rain. Coleman could only catch the director's apology by the movement of his lips before he turned away with a sweep of his coat around his dark leather boots. Steve Roger's eyes were bewildered blue pools under the brows he had furrowed. "Alright, that's enough. Wrap it up!" Fury tossed over his shoulder. He was almost to the tower doors when he turned again to the crowd. His face looked colder than usual. "Hey!" He twitched his eyebrows, and ever so suddenly, the crowd had grown silent. "I said, _'wrap it up.'_"

He glared seal-brown daggers at the media in the harrowing moment. The pounding of raindrops, heavy breaths, and the far-away noises of road rage were the only sounds to be heard in the cool air. Rogers was pushing himself away from the reporters with mannerisms much too firm and polite to be believable. As Director Fury pushed past the tinted doors of Stark Tower the droop of his head was disturbing, morose, even. Coleman had been looking as the day's very last picture was taken. She saw how whiteness reflected gently against the tower's polished glass, how it shivered over the puddles that danced along the ground of stone. If she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend it was a TV program, or an old film she was watching. A dream._ Anything._ Just not this strange, twisted reality that _was_.


	2. Day One

**A/N: I'm writing this story as if Fox and Marvel Studios would get along. So the twins won't be British like they'll be in the movie, but they'll be Transian instead. Their backgrounds are pretty much canonical with the comics, but I've made them younger, so there's a comfortable age difference. They're about as old as Cap, who's like, 25 or 26.**

**Based on the current casting rumors, Aaron Taylor-Johnson from Kick-Ass will be playing Quicksilver in the movie. So that's how I'll write him. As far as the Scarlet Witch goes, I think Saoirse Ronan is a better fit physically than Elizabeth Olsen, so I'll write the Scarlet Witch in her image instead. Elizabeth Olsen doesn't seem to have the emotional, mature look that Saoirse has physically. She's too adorable, and the witch is supposed to be torn and damaged. ****Sorry if this disappoints anyone.**

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**Day One**

**November 12th, 2015; 6:45 AM; Stark Tower Roof, NYC _(101 days earlier.)_**

Atop the roof of Avengers tower, ominous shadows curled under the feet of the many bodies that stood tense, armed with an array of high-tech weapons as they blinked away the morning sunlight with tired eyes. It had been six o'clock at dawn when a foreign aircraft took land on the roof, six ten when Fury had burst into the tower ordering that every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent have it surrounded, and by the half of the hour, an abundance of news stations were buzzing around in the skies, no doubt with their cameras streaming live to every city in the country.

Tony Stark stood among a crescent of Avengers at the very front of the scene and cast light brown eyes at the throngs of weapons for another time. Each and every one of them was aimed narrowly at the small helicopter, and had been for about fifteen minutes.

To his left, Tony could hear Clint mumble something, probably to Natasha, he guessed. The two agents were side-by-side, Romanov with a pistol and Barton with the string of his bow pulled taut as he whispered to her. Tony thought the picture would have looked much more intimidating if Clint wasn't wearing a Kermit the Frog shirt and pair of black sweats. He couldn't pick on 'Tasha much, because even with polka-dotted night pants clinging to her hip bones, she still somehow managed to look like some kind of a warrior-princess. Tony's lips cracked into a smirk at the thought. He could've sworn he'd seen Pepper wearing those once. Or a similar pair in white. He hadn't observed them very well; he'd been too focused on taking them off of her to give a damn about color at the time.

Bruce stood to Tony's right, tightening and relaxing his fists, his eyes investigating the roof with careful sweeps. The doctor donned his usual pair of tan slacks and an airy blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Tony snorted. The guy wore a similar outfit every day, the only difference ever being the color of the shirt he wore, or what side his graying hair was going to be parted on. You never knew what Thor would wear. Clint just wore whatever, and Natasha's number one fashion choice seemed to be anything that fit her curvy figure enough to make a straight man drool at the sight of her. For obvious reasons, Clint didn't seem to mind Natasha's wardrobe choice and neither did Thor because Thor was Thor, and Thor wasn't familiar with decent dress code.

In fact, upon peering over Rogers and Bruce to find the demigod, Tony caught him standing shirtless in the wind. That's right; in 59º weather, the only article of clothing on Thor's body was a blue pair of Fruit of the Loom boxer briefs. Tony snorted into his knuckles and watched with smiling eyes as the Asgardian spat a length of yellow hair from his mouth, a scowl made of his regal features at his own poor fortune.

While admittedly, it was nice to smile, the billionaire's grin didn't last for long. He dropped his eyes to the sweats on his legs, observed briefly the powder-white tank top that hugged his torso a little too tightly. _"Like a koala to a tree branch,"_ Pepper had told him earlier that morning. Tony almost smiled before his mind recalled in vivid detail what had happened next. She'd rolled her eyes, a grin being hidden under those delicate beads before he bent to kiss her. She'd raised a hand to him and trailed her thumb over that thin, pink scar that curved over his bottom lip before their mouths could meet. That was when he'd glanced away.

He remembered the feel of her warm fingers thumbing over the casing of his arc reactor, could perfectly recall the straightening of the freckles on her nose as she willed his eyes through the silence to meet hers.

He hadn't looked. He couldn't have. He'd known that in her beautiful green eyes he'd find sadness, concern, a heavy trace of desperation. It was an expression he'd grown too familiar with over the short span of their relationship. So he had resisted.

Tony thumbed at the scar on his lip and eyed the helicopter a dozen meters away, the thick silence of the air having cut into his thoughts for the first time that morning. Not one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents twitched or dared move a barrel from the helicopter even while Clint was quietly voicing his doubt that anyone was aboard the thing. The stillness was starting to get to Tony. He wasn't going to tell Fury, but an inch of him was glad that S.H.I.E.L.D. set a small base in the Avengers Tower.

Normally the upper levels of the tower were empty, but another crisis had brought the team together a week ago and they hadn't quite gotten around to breaking apart yet. It was an issue that involved mutants. The Brotherhood. The X-Men. Things of that sort.

The X-Men had been tripping over themselves trying to fend off the Brotherhood's attacks and it'd only taken a few civilian fatalities to convince Fury that they needed to "get their asses out there and do something about it." So, they did. They joined the battle, improving the odds at first, but once the initial shock wore off on the Brotherhood, they were quickly back to kicking ass. Somewhere in the back of his mind as he swung Natasha over the head of a mutant, letting the Widow tackle them to the ground, Tony wondered how the Brotherhood grew so resistant to the X-Men's attacks. How they grew so immune that the Wonder Class of super mutants couldn't stop them. There had only been a few of the Brotherhood, last Tony checked, and now the X-Men seemed grateful for the help, whereas they'd usually find the Avengers' presence a nuisance.

Tony would've pondered more on the topic, but that was when the pain had prickled through his spine, jolting through his mind and ripping his thoughts from his skull with a menacing creak of his metal armor. Damage readings had flickered over the genius' eyes, and Tony thought Magneto had enjoyed torturing him through his metal armor a little too much. The man grinned evilly past his helm, swinging his arm and sending Tony slamming into the door of a brick coffee shop with a shattering boom. The readings on Tony's screen had suddenly ripped down his vision and gone dark, Jarvis's electronic voice shuddering as it cut dead in the middle of its warning.

Things had been getting too challenging for the teams to ignore, that was for certain. Past the fogginess of pain and the blinding damage done to his visor, Tony could see that Blade-Knuckles was growing tired and Shiny-Eyes had already inadvertently killed two innocent stragglers with a turn of his head.

Over the roar of the battle, Clint had been screaming into his headpiece that he was in desperate need of ammo. Tony had risen to a knee, pain splintering down his spine the instant he bent to retrieve an arrow from the neck of a mutant. "Clint, I ca-" His words died in his throat at the sound of Clint's panting, grunting, a roar. Beast. Tony stretched again, hearing own his pained howl rattle through his helmet. "Someone," he had breathed, "someone get the hell over here and get Cupid his toy so he can play. I'm down."

Silence. A grunting scream from Thor that was soon followed by an impact that made the ground quake beneath Tony. A large, familiar green figure pounded nearby, and from the corner of Tony's eye, the Hulk swatted low and sent a body tearing high through the smoke and far out of Tony's viewing range. Tony heard the shatter of glass, the Hulk's victorious bellow. A car alarm had begun to wail in the distance, and through the din of the battle, a female voice shrieked a name that the genius couldn't recognize for the life of him.

Hawkeye's voice trembled through Tony's earpiece. "I need a _fucking_ bolt!"

The Captain had knelt and flicked his shield a foot over the concrete road, nailing a mutant in the knee from twelve yards away.

When he rolled over the hood of a van, the metal crumpled beneath him, folding over his ankle in a hold that would have crushed the bones of a normal human being. Like Pepper, for instance. Steve had cursed, and he tore his eyes from the scrap of bent red metal that was Tony Stark. "Hawk, I'm coming for you; just hold still!" Steve had lifted the metal to free his ankle, a grunt tearing through grit teeth, and Rouge, a mutant, lifted him a meter from the ground to drop him on his tattered knees. The soldier hadn't noticed the van move to its front wheels, tilting dangerously over him as he collected his bearings.

Natasha had screamed for the captain, but her voice was barely any more than a grunt as she dodged a deadly punch, doubling back to dodge another. She was too late. Almost. The car had suddenly flown backwards across the pavement, and with an audible crunch beneath the sound of metal against brick, a brotherhood mutant was pinned against the ground.

Tony had squeezed his eyes against the sight, and when again he opened them, the Captain had been ripping the helmet from his pounding head. A jerk of the wrinkled metal, a twist, and when the Captain tossed the metal to the side, the clang of metal on concrete brought an unwelcome familiarity to Tony's ears. The face of the soldier above him was pale, the man's cheeks dusted a light red and soot highlighting the bones in his face. Steve heaved a lungful of breaths, and a hint of a smile had curved of his lips when he met Stark's grateful eyes. He pat the side of the mechanic's unshaven face. "Hang in there."

"Thanks, Spangles."

The captain's face fell in annoyance, and Tony gave a pained laugh as the soldier listened into his earpiece. "Shit." He turned on his heel and ripped an arrow from the neck of a mutant before standing and vaulting in Clint's direction, shouting things into his earpiece that merely faded into the distant havoc with each wide step he took.

It had taken the heroes a full ten minutes to notice how the battle had seemed to just stop on its own. The evil mutants were either gone, or were lying in dead heaps of flesh on the ground. Metal had stopped bending at every angle. The NYPD had begun collecting bodies from the totaled road, pulling mangled survivors into the backs of ambulances, comforting crying children with stuffed dalmatians and forced smiles. The world had grown eerily silent, and Tony didn't feel comfortable climbing into the back of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s aircraft. After a battle like this, he never did.

During Fury's debriefing, Tony honestly hadn't been in the mood for giving any shits about wherever the hell Magneto could have gone. He had leaned back in his seat, unable for one of a handful of times to crack any jokes about what was being said over the mission. The team had looked awfully concerned, all except for Bruce, who had seemed to be the only one to share his fellow scientist's utter lack of a fuck to give.

Tony's mind was forced back into the present when the door of the helicopter cracked open, revealing the faint image of a heeled red boot. After almost an hour of silence, Tony couldn't blame the agents for shuffling on their toes a bit at the sudden display of motion. That was when Tony realized that he was without his armor, standing as close as Fury would allow them to the hazard, and he didn't even have a firearm.

His stomach sank when he remembered the current state of his suit. Even if he could call it to him, the thing was too beat up to do much of anything other than provide him with a bit of flimsy coverage. His next suit wouldn't have any metal.

Words, soft, muttered, were faintly audible under the morning breeze and the quiet sound of agents cocking their guns.

Two partners strode hand-in-hand from the copter, the shorter figure's body showing tight curves as she walked. The woman gently slipped her hand from her partner's as she slid into the light, her curves oddly highlighted in the skintight red suit she was wearing. Her cape cascaded down her back in large wrinkles of magenta, and nipped at the backs of her calf-high boots. Her entire midsection, all but her shoulders, was hidden under the mask of red suede armor that stopped in a 'v' low between her breasts and ended in red spikes over top of them. Her mask did little to hide her identity. It wrapped under her chin in a soft, red arch, and covered the curves around her face, ending about a half-foot above each of her temples in two spikes, dipping toward the center of her forehead in a 'v' shape.

Scarlet curls caressed her shoulder blades as she walked, and she stopped before the crowd, crossing her red gloves behind her back and raising her chin in a friendly way. Her eyes, a homely mantis green, focused on the jagged pink scar that ran up Natasha's jaw. Her expression showed a pang of guilt as she turned her head to the side, her shoulders rolling to her jaw before she relaxed them.

Clint let his eyelids droop slightly, dirty blond eyelashes flicking over the gray of his irises. "Damn," he muttered. The Widow cut the silence with a quiet cough into her shoulder, and the man raised his brows, moving his lips in a silent apology.

Pink crawled up the Scarlet Witch's skin. She parted her lips in a silent breath when her partner's hand pressed to the small of her back, and Tony didn't miss how Natasha had to narrow the cloudiness from her eyes as she observed the man. His eyes were so startling, they nearly managed to steal attention from his stark-white mane. They were a calculating blue, radiating hostility that, if you really looked, you could see hidden in the depths of his partner's darker eyes. A thin suit of periwinkle mirrored the subtle movements in his torso, his legs, leading down his corded forearms only to end in beaten white gloves. A bolt of white lightning crossed his abdomen and bent with the shadows of his muscles until it ended at the dip in his stomach.

The mechanic narrowed his eyes at him. He looked like someone Pepper would swoon over for days, or someone she'd mention in a list of 'incredibly hot guys' plucked from the top of her mind in a conversation. But that hardly mattered. There was a faint trace of recognition that seemed to have risen to the expressions of every person who stood on Stark's roof. Some wore scowls, some sneered, and a number of the agents offered confused gazes to the mutants before them. But it was obvious to Tony in the depths of his own mind that the people were all sharing a single, similar thought: _"What do these people want with us?"_

And one of the reasons was glaring Tony in the face, but even he wasn't sure how it supplied any answers. These were Magneto's twins. No one dared to bring it up, but Tony was damn-near certain he was right about it. Giving the runner a second glance, he could spot the familiar brow line and squared jaw immediately in the mutant before him. They seemed to share long lips, not thin, but ones that weren't quite petite or in the shape of a crossbow. They were similar in shape to that of a long-bow, really, but Tony didn't remember seeing anything like them in their father's face. In the witch's looks, the family resemblance was a little less bold. The squared jaw, the long, petite-looking nose that was more than slightly adorable. Tony could spot her father in the curvature of her ears and the shape of her soft green eyes. The similarities to Lensherr seemed to horrify the others.

Tony was admittedly a little shaken himself.

"The Scarlet Witch," he began suddenly. It was like he was trying to talk away his insecurities, and most of the time, that worked pretty well in stalling even the most inevitable of consequences. The female mutant was suppressing her smile by puckering her lips, and Tony traced light eyes over her brother's periwinkle muscles. He didn't know the man's name, and had never heard it. So he offered, "Speed in Tight Pants." The mutant scoffed. A smirk crossed his lips, and he averted his gaze to the cement in a cold sweep, only bringing them up when his icy glare resurfaced.

"So, uh..." Tony began. His voice began to trail at the runner's glare, and he earned it back. "You guys got any of your friends in there, or is this a solo act?"

The witch shot her brother a look. The man stood rigid by her side with his bright eyes cold under furrowed brows as he scrutinized the team. Something about his stare shot Tony as strange. Perhaps it was the appearance of the group, Clint's Kermit the Frog shirt and Thor's blatant nakedness that was throwing off the runner. Whatever it was, Tony didn't think the guns or weapons were concerning him in the least.

Tony caught the glow of his sister's scarlet fingertips, how the color of her glove dulled beneath the magic she hid behind her cape. She gave an easy shake of her head and sent deep auburn curls shifting over her magenta cape, shuffling in a way that brought falter to the crease in Tony's brows. A familiar dark-skinned hand pushed the genius backward into his line with the others, and Director Fury was narrowing his one good eye at the pair of mutants. The air had grown cool, still.

"I recognize you two from the Brotherhood," he told them. The brother's brows were creased in what seemed to be a cross of worry and focus. Fury punctuated his next words with a glare of his own. His back was straight, his arms were crossed over his dark cape and in his fist was a pistol, metal and fearsome. "Is there any particular reason why you came?" He asked, looking between the mutant twins with deep brown glances.

The runner's eyes shifted to his sister. She had a thoughtful look on her face, and the bite on her lip showed uncertainty, hesitance. Her mantis eye didn't seem to want to leave the concrete, and for a short moment, they stayed on it. Then her face seemed to straighten. "There are many reasons," she uttered. Her accent was uncut, and noticeably Romanian.

Fury considered the witch with a lifted chin, and the air seemed to grow still. "Such as...?" Prodded the agent.

The witch's fingers began to twist into a loose fist behind her cape, and her gloves were a dull, soft pink beneath the glow of her magic. She lifted her wise green stare to meet his, and a faint image of New York's wispy clouds twinkled in the reflection in her eyes. "Magneto's been silent," she told the director.

The man suppressed a scoff, but it came out as a tired huff through his incredulous grin. "Well, isn't that a _good_ thing? The longer Magneto's out, the better," Fury chided the witch. It was almost comical, the expression on the Agent's bearded face, but Tony refrained from chuckling. Nick continued, "That being said, I find your worry misplaced. Unnecessary, even."

Quicksilver made tightly closed lines of his eyes, pinched the tall bridge of his nose with covered fingers. He seemed only seconds from releasing a growl and attacking each person on the roof in a flurry of fists and well-placed elbows to the neck. "Even so,_ director, _you seem to be forgetting the fact that we harbor most _vital_ information. Information vital not only to _you._"

Fury raised an unkempt brow at the mutant. "Is that true?" He asked. But the agent's voice was dry and lifeless.

"It won't stay like this for long. We don't want any part in the things they'll do henceforth," the runner told him. In the middle of his words, his eye shifted down to his sister. Tony noticed how she smoothed a hand up his glove, how natural the movement was for her; how instinctive. She didn't seem to notice the billionaire's eyes, and her brother returned his gaze to the agent with a shallow breath and rise of his chest. "We have come to help," announced the mutant.

In the moment, a pregnant pause flooded the air with only the noises of wind and of the chopping of rotors in the sky. Even Tony, for once of a handful of times, found himself lost for words. "So, you'd like to join us," Fury stalled. As the runner clenched his teeth in impatience, the agent's full, dark lips curved into a teasing smirk. Quicksilver averted his scowl to a helicopter just long enough to miss the way Fury's face morphed into a menacing glare. "I'm not sure if you've noticed," Fury spat, "but you have interrupted the beauty sleep of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Speedster. And for the amount of ass-kicking they do, I'd say they deserve a _hell_ of a lot more of it than you've allowed."

There was an unusual pause from the runner, and his startling blue eyes shifted to Fury immediately. His sneer grew thicker, his fists strained beneath the material of his stark-white gloves. The man's voice was only a decibel below a shout when he scolded, furious, "Is beauty sleep a _priority,_ director?!" Agents shouted at the man, prodding their weapons at the air, but he didn't seem to have a damn to provide.

The witch tightened her grip on her brother's hand, the magenta-on white contrast of their laced fingers odd in the morning light. Her mantis glare made the knots in her brother's silver brows grow tighter, but all-in-all silenced the runner.

She turned to the director with apologetic green eyes. "Director, Magneto saved us," she told him. Her eyes narrowed at the Fury not in accusation, but in something similar to a pleading glare. "We were going to be zoo pets if he hadn't taken us in, and until now, we felt obligated to repay him. We knew. We knew that he wanted to rid the world of the weak; the fragile humans." With vermilion hands, she gestured in the direction of the agents, Tony, the director. "Magneto had a plan, and now, facing it's beginning, my brother and I have made the decision not to take part in it."

In her pause in speech, The witch gave the ground near Bruce a hesitant glance from the corner of her eye as she paused in her speech. She seemed to show resentment when she looked at him, and upon catching his faded green eyes, her gaze lingered. Her smile was forced, solemn, like she was searching for a way to forgive him for something he'd done. "If it means that we can join you," the witch told Fury, her voice low, her Transian accent sultry, "we're more than willing to put the past behind us."

Tony remembered hearing a name being screamed during the battle with the X-Men. He remembered the blare of a car alarm, the Hulk's violent roar as a body tore limply through the towering plumes of smoke and dust. He remembered a female's bloodcurdling shriek.

The director lifted his hands to his hips and scanned over Tony's lab partner, his full lips pursed into a thin line as the scientist avoided his gaze. Fury let his eye land on the toe of his boot, and for another time of few, guilt sliced into his features. "Ease up on the guns," ordered the director. A moment passed, and he slid his gaze from the ground to keep it focused on the mutants for a while. It stayed, as if he was calculating the twins' abilities, their values as heroes. He finally finished, "I think the twins are alright."

Every agent lowered their weapon in that moment, and the noise of beeps and clicks began chiming quietly in the morning breeze. The Widow scanned over the runner, the witch, with distrustful green eyes, pushing her pistol into her belt.

Tony peeled his light gaze from the twin mutants. On the opposite end of the roof stood his beautiful Pepper Potts, an olive-green sweater wrapped around her body and a gleaming Stark tablet pressed to her slim middle. Her ocean-blue eyes were the widest Tony'd seen them in a while, and he raked fingers through his untamed hair as he pushed after his girlfriend's figure.

Judging by the bewilderment in her soft blue eyes, he'd be spending most of his afternoon explaining today. He ignored the eyes on his back, the silent questions in the air that floated after him. His body beckoned for the burn of alcohol, but he wouldn't allow himself to do that to Pepper.

_**POV: Bruce Banner**_

Stark had left the circle without warning.

Part of Bruce Banner wanted to promptly follow suit. He had too many responsibilities. Too many unspoken duties to accomplish, however badly. Frankly, guilt was the only thing that kept him from going right on ahead.

Bruce glanced nervously at the line of Avengers to his sides, and his hands grew sore from all the wringing he was putting them through. He avoided the pierce of the mutants' judgmental stares. "So, uh... anyone wanna...," he glanced from Natasha to Thor, from Clint to Steve, but only gained expressions of firm circumspection in result.

Bruce sighed emphatically. He clapped his hands together as he took a step forward, muttering the word, 'okay' to himself in a breath just loud enough for others to hear. A somewhat forced smile played across his lips when the mutants stood, unimpressed by his shivery outstretched hand.

Quicksilver wet his lips and turned his head from Bruce, his teeth clenched under the taut skin of his jaw. A faint tinge of guilt made the fingers of the doctor's outstretched hand pull inward toward his palm, and with his other hand, he removed his glasses. "Hi," he said, rattling the digits at them slightly. "You two must have heard of me; I'm doctor Bruce Banner," the scientist told them. It was obvious to Bruce that the twins had more than just heard of him; they'd _experienced_ him. He found it easier to play oblivious.

The twins exchanged a look that lingered until the witch took Bruce's hand with a delicate glove. She peered down at his digits without a twitch of her smooth, gentle features. Bruce felt his lips part as the girl placed a hand of crimson velvet over his unsteady wrist. "Well, would you look at that," he muttered. The scientist let badly imitated surprise take over his handsome features and chuckled, "one of them acknowledged me."

Without even catching a visual of the other Avengers, something told Bruce that nobody had reacted to the joke. And he wasn't surprised. The others were afraid of him. They were afraid of his condition, and they were afraid of whatever the Hulk had done to Quicksilver during their last battle. They liked to act like it wasn't blatantly obvious, but Bruce knew. Bruce knew, and he was much too used to shoving it below him and burying his mind somewhere else, like in his research, or in some test tubes when he wasn't halfway around the world saving lives.

He distracted himself with the image of the witch before him. A pang of hurt left him dragging his breaths at her reluctance to look into his eyes. This was getting uncomfortable; he wanted to take his hand from the grasp of her suede gloves and escape to the lab, study or experiment with mixtures. It took the woman a moment to look at his face, but when she did, the scientist found himself breathless for other reasons. Hurt, attraction, guilt towards something he hadn't necessarily done. Resentment toward another addition to the perpetual list of things he had only himself to blame for.

The scarlet beauty pursed her lips together, and Bruce blinked against the sheen of the crimson he suddenly felt the urge to taste. He watched them curve into a quiet smile, and took a breath when he felt the velvet warmth of her hands slip from his.

Her mouth twitched at the doctor in something like consideration before she averted her mantis gaze and turned to the other Avengers. Most of them seemed anxious, dazed, but Steve and Clint in particular were working the hardest to wipe the befuddlement from their expressions. Bruce could see the familiar pair of sea-blue eyes tear from his figure before the captain pulled a grin at the witch and set his charm on display for her.

Bruce glanced around the roof and exchanged the throb in his hands for a chrome pen he'd use to thump against his palm in his anxiety. He glanced a few yards away at the tall, slender figure who hovered over his sister's shoulder with a nearly invisible smile tilting his pink lips.

Another growl tore into the scientist's conscious at the sight of the blue-clad mutant, and in that moment, Bruce felt the thump of his pen grow faster against the palm of his hand. He could walk away, or he could face what the Hulk had done.

But a flash of sharp blue eyes didn't leave him with a decision to make. Quicksilver's ice-white gaze never left Bruce as he rose a glove to peel a shower of dark curls from the witch's ear. His sister paused, and the Avengers followed the movements of Quicksilver's light pink lips in the silence.

No emotion tinted the Scarlet Witch's gaze when she looked at the scientist. He thought he'd seen concern cross her eyes, but was too late to find out if he was wrong or not. The witch looked up at her brother who placed a gentle kiss above her right ear and muttered his delicate words of parting.

A dip formed at the edge of Bruce's full lips as he looked after the mutants. It was odd, how the male acted as if he'd be leaving for a good spell. A gust of wind broke the scientist's train of thought before the male mutant disappeared altogether. Bruce searched the roof with dark green eyes. The way chestnut curls billowed around the witch's face were the only sign the runner had ever stepped foot in the area.

Then Bruce's confusion met a peak. A sharp gust of wind sounded by the genius' side, befuddling and shocking the man. Unruly peppered curls fluttered atop his pounding head, and Bruce heard the words, "Mr. Banner."

He hadn't been expecting the mutant to be standing so close when he turned, barely a foot and a half separating the two light figures. The scientist thumped the pen against his palm, switching hands and thumping a bit harder on the other hand as he took a small step back. "I wasn't expecting us to meet like this," he rambled. A nervous chuckle parted his full lips, and the runner didn't so much as shrug as he stared Banner down. With his blue eyes hooded in such a manner, the runner looked like he was only half listening.

The scientist refrained from looking away as the fitter man's jaw ticked. "Well, you've met the...Other Guy, I assume," Bruce trailed. His voice was inept, and awkward. "...And now you're meeting... Me."

The mutant made an impatient clicking sound, running the pink tip of his tongue over white teeth and forming a making a quick save by forming a faux smile of his lips. The way he crossed his arms, muscled, experienced under his tight blue suit, didn't offer the scientist before him any time to do or say much of anything else.

Banner could feel the Hulk huff inside of him, could imagine the monster sporting a similar posture. With the pen, the scientist raised a brow and gestured towards the mutant. The smile had long slipped from his face. "So, what did he do to you?"

The mutant gave a huff, his expression impassive until he closed his lips together and averted his gaze. The young man seemed to have some respect for Bruce, like he wanted to get the monster out of him. "You want to see, don't you?" Murmured the runner. The blueness of his eyes rose to meet the genius, and Bruce silently remarked about how similar the man looked to his sister. With the almond shape of his eyes, the thickness of his wide, pink lips, the mutant was a masculine copy of the beauty that had greeted Bruce minutes before.

The scientist did his best not to make it obvious that in staring down the mutant, he was searching for other similarities. He ached to clear his throat, but couldn't, and he answered, "Yes, I'd like to see the scars. If need be, we can have an examination preformed."

Quicksilver's eyes darted somewhere in the distance, the light of the sun glinting in his vivid pools of blue. His gaze traveled back to the doctor's, and he shook his head firmly in response. "No. I don't think you ought to. Right now wouldn't be a good time."

Bruce shoved his pen into the pocket of his slacks. "Listen," he told the runner, and he picked his wire-framed glasses from the dip in his shirt collar to fiddle with as he spoke. "I think I understand what your mutation is. What's your name?" He asked.

The mutant's eyes remained on his for a sturdy, cold spell. Bruce had his attitude narrowed down to one of two things: either the speedster had issues with trusting people, or he was like this to everyone he had to deal with, rude or kind. There was a chance, Bruce suspected, that both explanations rang true. "Maximoff," said the runner.

Bruce let his eyes flutter shut to quell the Hulk's rising irritation. "Maximoff," the scientist repeated. "Look, I just want to get this over with. I want to see what the Hulk has done, and I want to get a good idea of what measures need to be taken to fix it. No harm done, I just want to look." He had a mellow voice, and with an arm of his glasses pinched in his fingers, he splayed his hands flat in front of him to reassure the man.

The mutant began to peel back the collar of his suit with tentative, slow fingers. Under his breath, something like a defiant "suit yourself" was muttered, and Bruce watched a sneer return to the runner's pink lips as the material was slowly stretched back. The lower the mutant reached on his muscled chest, the tighter his jaw clenched itself. Bruce could hear conversations growing softer, he could feel eyes narrowing past the hunch of his back as they peered at every inch of the mutant's taut flesh.

With every inch, the blues grew darker, fading into deep purples that twisted in the sunlight at every rise and fall of the mutant's chest under the pressure of his forcibly slow breaths. The man let out a quiet hiss of pain, squinting his ice blue eyes when his fingernail scraped over the scabbed-over crescent-shaped scar the Hulk's nail left in the crease under his right pectoral.

"Shit." Bruce could hear a familiar, firm voice mutter the word under a feminine breath of air. He felt the group's presence gathering to his sides, and could only twist one of the arms of his wire glasses against his full bottom lip, his right elbow resting in the crook of his arm as he stared dazedly at the result of the Hulk's rage. The image left him stupefied, his mind numb. He was in no sort of condition to produce a conceivable thought.

"Dear God," Steve breathed. Bruce felt the Captain's presence hovering behind his right shoulder, still, rigid.

Thor's voice carried no tone. His lack of an expression was audible in his dry words. "Thank you," murmured the demigod. No one dared to correct him.

Fury was stepping behind them, gearing to speak before the form draped in scarlet moved timidly toward her brother. Her back was hunched in strain, a gloved arm wrapped around her curving stomach and a velvet hand cupping her mouth as if to silence her fear. Bruce could see the way her body shook, could hear the fear wreck her from the inside. Quicksilver looked at her, his lips parted, and carefully lifted the stretch of his suit to cover his scars with a blanket of light teal. He wrapped an arm around her waist as she bowed her forehead into the crook of his neck, whimpering his name. "Pietro." The word shook with the tremors of her tears.

Her brother leaned in to whisper to her, his lips moving calmly against her maroon waves of hair. "Don't cry, Wanda. Don't."

Clint leaned in slightly to peer past Pietro's neck at the girl. Her mantis green eyes looked like glass under the build of her thick tears, and he gave a slight shrug, shaking his head in defeat. "It's too late," he told him. Bruce was the only one who noticed Natasha smack him on the ear.

"Don't cry," Pietro repeated, "because then I'm gonna cry, and..." The runner narrowed his eyes at Bruce, who'd been observing from a distant place in his mind. The mutant averted his gaze before squeezing it shut altogether. "We're fine here, Wanda. We're safe."

Wanda's eyes gleamed like polished diamonds when she lifted from him. The skin of her face was blushed a tulip pink, just dark enough to be compared to the scarlet color of the suit that hugged her body. "You're right, Pietro. You're right, we're fine." She moved away from him and grabbed his hand in hers. Her other glove of crimson rose to brush tears from her face. "Lord, this is embarrassing."

Natasha folded her arms over the silken black top that blanketed her chest. With a slow shake of her head, she found her bare lips curving into a kind smile that felt undeniably natural. "No," she assured. "It's sweet." A kind note danced in the softness of her voice, mingling with the cool New York air.

The mutants, meanwhile, were avoiding eye-contact. A red blush crawled up Quicksilver's pale skin, and when he met his sister's wise green eyes, a connection of sorts allowed their gazes to linger. The widow cocked her head thoughtfully at the two. "How old are you?"

The question sat in the air a moment, Steve perking an eyebrow at the mutants. When neither of them uttered a response, Fury took a step forward. "We'll have time to investigate that later, agent Romanoff; perhaps in a meeting. Stark will assign living quarters to the two of them as a start..." His eye dropped to Quicksilver. "Unless something needs to be done to speed up that healing process."

Rogers looked at the director with blatant despondence in his blue eyes. "Stark left the roof."

"I was there." The director narrowed his eye at the witch, then at the runner, both of whom sported concentration on their once-red faces. The witch still had traces of tears etched into the paleness of her skin, but all-in-all, the situation was forgotten. "Barton."

"Sir?" The hawk stepped closer to Fury's side, but the agent didn't move his seal-brown eyes to examine him.

"Keep an eye on the mutants while I get Stark out of wherever he may be. Make sure everyone gets inside the tower where these news stations aren't peering over us," Fury ordered. A glance at the CNN copters turned into a brief sweep of his eye over Barton's figure. Clint was standing in the breeze, the archer's bright green Kermit the Frog shirt slapping against his chest in the wind. Fury scoffed loudly. "For God's sake, agent, make an effort to look somewhat respectable."

Clint didn't bother to stifle his grin as he glanced at Natasha, who smirked with soft, bare lips.

A dark cape swooshed around the director's feet as he left for the door on the far side of the roof. He splayed his fingers over the door's metal, pushing it inward with a hurried shove. "Hill," the agent tossed over his shoulder. His voice was farther away now, as it faded with his steps into the tower. "Let's beat it."

The door fell closed on its own, and Thor suddenly looked more flustered than he usually did. The demigod cast thick blue glances around the roof and pushed his lip in thought. "Hill? Are you sure..." The Asgardian's voice faded as the leather-donning agent materialized from the shadows, her expression bland, emotionless.

The demigod trailed Hill's figure with bewildered blue eyes, and the archer clicked his tongue as he moved to follow the agent, the Russian walking close behind him. "You should've seen that one coming, Thor," the Hawk murmured.

The demigod moved to follow the agents, his naked shoulders rolling regally in the morning air as he walked. Rogers caught the door, letting the mutants exit the roof after the Asgardian. Steve was halfway into the hallway when his eyes betrayed him. He squinted his seas of blue through the wind, his plaid button-down shirt flapping as he rose a hand to guard his concerned eyes. "You coming, big guy?"

Bruce pressed his glasses higher on his nose. His hands took on their usual nervous habit in wringing themselves. "Uh..." He felt his throat growing tighter around what little air he could breath, and he forced his eyes closed against the images of purples and blues atop scarred, pale skin. He squeezed them tighter against the fury that rose when the pictures came rushing back. "Yeah," he spat. The word came suddenly, like something forced it past his lips. "Yeah, I'm coming."

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**Evil and Proud: Many of the MA scenes are going to involve one of the twins. Through this, conflicts will arise. Virtually any pairing is potential, though. The mutants are not in a sexual relationship yet, by the way, and I think I'll have a few chapters that are all about that. It will come, though, and I'll give Stony some thought. Thanks for the review. :) **


	3. The Infirmary

**A/N: A new character peeks her head in this go-around. She is not original; she has somewhat of a part with the F4, and quite a connection with Quicksilver in the comics. Either way, this chapter is quite slashy, so consider yourself warned. Enjoy. :)**

* * *

**The Infirmary**

**December 2nd, 2015; Stark Tower Infirmary**

In the silence there was stillness; a rush of air and then nothing. Steve felt the humidity of his sweat pull at the gauntlet before it slid from his hand following another small tug. The coolness of the air was the first sensation Steve felt in his sore digits, and he took a breath at the sudden relief, stretching his fingers to expel the rigidity of his joints. He tossed the gauntlet to the side where it sat on the small hills of the white, sterile sheets of the hospital bed.

Each breath the captain took was labored, the pace of his inhalations difficult to control. He found himself staring blankly at the contrast of the crimson gauntlet as it rolled into the dip his weight made in the mattress. The red-on-white reminded the soldier of the mutants just as much as it returned his mind to memories of the flag.

His hand hovered over the gauntlet. Did he want to pick it up? What was he doing? "Steve." The voice that spoke his name carried the familiar nuance of harshness, a rough, demanding undertone that Steve didn't think would ever go away. The accent was familiar too, now that Steve had spent a week growing used to it. The soldier took a sharp breath and lifted his gaze at the easy sound of his name.

The flakes of white, crispy ice looked at him under tufts of silver that were softly furrowed as they always were. The runner wore light-grey sweatpants that curved in inevitable ruffles around his calves, fitting his muscular thighs loosely enough to let him run and breathe. Over it all, he wore a rich white cotton shirt that bent slightly with the curves of his pectorals, revealing faint traces of muscles in his crossed arms through the lightly-colored cloth.

Steve felt his breath halt in his chest when the ice of Pietro's eyes flicked onto his, catching him taking in the image of the runner's own body. Steve could have sworn he saw shock pass the runner's eyes, then amusement. He suspected that what must have been a prolonged glance at Pietro's figure was probably a nice long gander in the runner's own world.

"Can I help you?"

"No," was the one-word response the runner snapped in reply and his eyes grew gelid as they had been before. "You can't. People have tried. My sister-"

Steve's eyes were cold on the mutant's. "You know what I mean, Piet." With his uncovered hand, he pulled the Captain America hood from his head, immediately feeling the frigid air of Stark's in-tower infirmary nip at the sweaty blonde locks.

Pietro's focus faltered for a second, falling to the ground in something like modesty. The runner dragged his ice-cold gaze back to Steve's eyes. "I know I do."

And for a moment, the descent into silence was the only perceptible occurrence in the room. Steve thought mutant's face looked about as void of emotion as one of those Greek statues Clint had taken him to see at the museum a few weeks ago. None of the stone bodies had worn smiles, or frowns. There was no laughter, no pain. Only deep thought had been etched into the delicate faces.

The the flakes of ice didn't move from Steve; not even when the captain worked to unbuckle the strap of his other gauntlet, or when the soldier glanced away just to avoid the cold stare.

The captain felt the hold grow loose around his wrist and the glove came off easily, most of the humidity having already been expelled at the removal of the buckle. A gust of cool wind coursed toward him through the air, and the empty room on the hospital bed dipped with Pietro's weight.

Steve did his best to ignore the eyes, and cast his gaze to the other end of the sterile room to see both of his gauntlets on the smooth, steel hospital table that sat there. His shield, gleaming in the brilliant light of the room, was propped against one of the legs of the table, yards away from where Steve had dropped it to the ground upon his entrance. For a moment, his mind failed to produce words to speak.

"You seem fine."

Steve had to wipe his amazement to fully grasp the comment. "Fine?" spat the soldier. The word tasted acidic, sharp on his tongue, and his eyes turned cold with resentment toward the mutant who had his elbows rested on the cotton over his knees, the fingers of each of his hands laced together in the gap between them.

There was hint of a scowl pushing the runner's top lip as he eyed the soldier and Steve could sense his stare was carrying a warning somewhere behind it. "Yes."

Steve grit his teeth and bent over his knees, working at the titanium buckles that kept his right boot secured to his leg. Any glance he shared with the mutant from then on was a long, hard glare from his own eyes. The mutant didn't quite return the glare but instead responded with a scowl that by the third glance, had revealed something like guilt from behind the walls of ice. Silence had fallen once again.

Thoughts charged into Steve's conscious, the memories still fresh, the images of any traitor he'd ever met still clear as diamonds in his mind's eye. Steve peeled the tongue of the boot from his leg, his fingers moving to loosen the laces when the tongue wouldn't move far enough. When he noticed that his gaze had risen to Pietro's eyes, it was too late. He hesitated to part his lips when the beads of ice locked him into place. "I've been worse," said the soldier. He cleared his throat and averted his gaze to tug harder on the laces. "Much worse."

He could feel Pietro's eyes on the back of his head, and couldn't honestly say he'd been expecting the runner to respond, "So have I."

Steve felt his back straighten at the response, but only very slightly. He found himself training his eyes not to look at the man, willing his lips not to speak. Steve moved to pull the tongue of his boot once again and this time felt it shift forward from the Kevlar of his suit, allowing air to circulate around the sore leg.

He couldn't sense a falter in Pietro's posture or in the gelid gaze that was locked on him. At the thought of those cold, white eyes focusing on him, Steve felt his throat tighten around the air he tried to breath. It was anger, it was hatred that had his mind screaming for air. It was also something else.

From beside him, the captain could hear Pietro breathe a soft huff of amusement. "I caught you staring a while ago," mentioned the runner.

Steve snorted inelegantly in response to the mutant, bracing his hands around the boot to pry it from his leg. With one tug, aches were sent down the nerves of his calf, his foot. He grit his teeth against the discomfort and with the loosening of another piece of lace, the boot slid from the limb, letting the air of the room cool him.

"Did you?" the soldier asked sarcastically. He leaned over his knee to work at the other buckle and allowed himself a long, judgmental glance at the mutant's stark-white hair, the trademark wings it curved into at the sides. He returned his attention back to the boot on his foot, telling the mutant, "A lot of people stare at you."

From the corners of his eyes, Steve saw Pietro's silver brows inch up his forehead in realization. "Oh, so it's the white hair, huh?" The mutant bounced the heel of his green suede shoe and moved his fingers together in a nervous habit. For a moment, Steve's fingers slowed in loosening the grip of his boot and he just watched the mutant, his blonde brows furrowed over ocean-blue eyes. The mutant caught the soldier's stare and was quick to avert his ice-white gaze, even quicker to speed up his nervous movements to a pace impossible for that of a natural human.

The captain gave the tongue of his boot a push forward and peeled the bright red shell from his calf following the tug of another lace. "That," began the soldier, "and the resemblance."

Steve only noticed the silence the room had fallen into when the sound of his boot coming off became the only audible thing happening in the room. He glanced to his side, no longer seeing the nervousness, the rapid bouncing of heels against sterile floors with blinding speed. The image of Pietro was cold again, gelid like the ice in which the soldier spent years of others' lives being frozen, contained. The soldier watched the mutant's jaw clench tighter and tighter as his sharp features bent in anger, guilt.

"We did not know," was the runner's grunted response. Then he tore his eyes from the captain, pulled them away as if he was rethinking ever sharing a word with Steve in the first place.

At this, Steve was supposed to feel his stomach tie in knots of guilt, of some kind of anger at himself or someone who wasn't Magneto's spawn. Admittedly, everyone had been a little pissed at the mutants. No— that was an understatement—there wasn't a single S.H.I.E.L.D agent or Avenger who hadn't felt betrayed when they found out what secrets the twins had been hiding. Depending on how you looked at it, they were innocent. Steve understood how it felt to be timid, reluctant to reveal things, but at the same time, everyone knew that the consequences of the twins' cowardice were too rough to forgive.

Here, as Steve sat in silence on sterile bed-sheets, Banner was raging on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s aircraft carrier in the very space Loki once stood to taunt them. Hawk and the Widow were many flights away in Europe, where all contact to the teams had reportedly been lost. And Stark? The last Steve had seen the billionaire was when the Iron Man armor was being forced from his body by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who detained the genius before the battle had ended. Even if Tony was the only person on the squad who was entirely unafraid of Dr. Banner, Steve could easily title his battle against the Hulk one of the worst struggles of his life, even if he had spent the majority of it "doin' time as a Capsicle."

This time when Steve felt the bile rise in his throat, felt ire wreck his breaths, he didn't feel guilty for it. The twins' gutlessness made them disloyal, and in turn, depleted their worth as Avengers. Steve couldn't think of a time when his hateful words toward Stark, the blasts the genius disproved early on in the Avengers' first assembly, ever rang truer.

The quotes sounded cold and harsh in the soldier's mind, though in these circumstances, perhaps not hateful enough to reflect his true disdain.

"Why are you still here?" was the question the soldier hissed at the mutant to break the silence.

_"The only thing you really fight for is yourself..."_

It took a moment, a brief side-glance of pale blue before the mutant made his mind and let his shards of ice collect on the ocean blue of Steve's glare. "I had a motive for coming here to you."

"Not the question." There was a snarl in Steve's voice; a douse of impatience, a whisper of force as it wrenched past the lips he had tightly shut. He was glad to see the runner perk a silver brow, though the wide crystal eyes refused to look at him. "I want to know what you and Wanda are still doing here."

The harshness in the soldier's voice only served to strike him as unnecessarily cold, and for the short moment Steve could contain the mutant's attention, a nearly imperceptible pang of hurt glazed over the crystal eyes. But just as soon as it arrived, it was replaced by resentment. "Fury is not impulsive enough to drop us," the runner denounced, searching the soldier's eyes with a cold gaze of his own for a reaction.

Anger boiled hotter in Steve's throat. Something about the arrogant lift in Pietro's back wiped away whatever guilt Steve felt about his coldness, the words he spoke hatefully to Pietro. When he glared into the ice of Pietro's eyes, he could feel anger clench tighter around whatever air he could force into his lungs. "I don't see why we need you," flared the soldier.

But even as he locked his gaze, there was no hurt that showed in the pale blue of the orbs across from him. "You—you don't see...," the runner quit on his words and the ice fell to the captain's boot, the red strewn across the tile in a maze of battered Kevlar restraints. Steve saw something like disappointment reflect in the mutant's knitted brows of silver before a cold glance touched his aquatic blue eyes.

There was a pause. A sharp burst of air slapped Steve's face and made the sweat in his unruly blonde curls stick closer to his forehead like dried glue.

He was gone, the soldier realized. It was about time.

Steve let his fingers play at the titanium buckle of the belt at his waist, his eyes taking on a glazed mien as he lost himself in the void of space beside him. His mind wanted to fix things before he lost them for good. He wanted to mend this before it all ended, like it would for everyone, and had for the ones he loved. His soul, however, the merciless soldier that had long ago become a part of him, strongly disagreed. Pietro was a good man, but the coward he'd seen too many of his soldiers become.

_"You may not be a threat, but you'd better stop pretending to be a hero..."_

Steve had never intended for the words to apply to himself even if he had just saved hundreds of lives in Manhattan.

With a click, the belt went slack in Steve's grip and snaked over the white sheets, clattering when it hit the ground. Steve felt his heart throb, could barely stand the churn of emptiness in his stomach. He didn't make a move for the utility belt.

Instead, his eyes roamed in soft ocean-blue over the sterile, white countertops, glossing over the tile floor he clinged to with his toes through the socks. From the outside, anyone could tell by the slow rise and fall of his abdomen, toned beneath the Kevlar, that the soldier was breathing. Deeply. For what must have been the hundredth time that day, he had his thoughts to collect.

He was thinking of mutant twins and badly-chosen words all the while the other side of his mind preferred to focus on traitors and the good decisions he made in separating from them. An almost imperceptible thunder of footfall diverted his attention successfully. He tried to shout through the air the words 'what do you want?' but suddenly the wind grew thick and he was choking on the roughness of his own voice.

He felt hands wrench around his corded wrists, could see blurriness, no evidence of anything around him for a moment before his back was slammed into the hospital mattress and his vision lost itself behind the darkness of his eyelids crushing shut.

When again he opened them, his bearings came in a strike of awareness, almost suddenly, like when a bullet hits flesh and the sting is the only pain the victim can comprehend in that moment.

The throbbing pulse in his temples made light swoop in his field of vision, a symphony of flapping bedsheets rousing his attention like Steve had never heard a breeze before. The bed's metal shafts whined and creaked beneath his impact against the mattress. The noises only served to infuriate him more.

The soldier thrust a fist to the face above him only to have the punch knocked away by something smaller, more agile and firmly-placed than it was tough against his wrist. He analyzed the glare of dilated pupils that hovered inches from his own murky blue eyes, could feel muscled legs straddling him to the mattress, a hill of heat against his groin that made him twitch slightly with the pressure.

Steve almost wanted to count the breaths against his face, wanted to feel every inch of the mutant press closer into his body with every breath they forced. He could feel the sharp, steamy breaths fanning against his parted mouth, the ache of unwanted trembles lurching down his spine.

And then the runner bucked against him with a strangled gasp of scalding air over Steve's lips.

The captain hadn't been paying attention to the way he wrenched a wrist from Pietro's grip.

He pulled from the contact, swinging the hand around the runner's slim waist, grabbing the taut muscles his fingers ached to touch. The other's groin slammed against his, and it shook the captain's world from focus, vibrating in a white-hot jolt of pressure between his thighs.

The young man's arms slipped from beneath him and he fell with his chest against the soldier, his hands moving somewhere to his sides to cling to the sheets on either side of the captain's head. A shower of silver hair fell into the soldier's face and shadowed his eyes from everything but the cloudy dilated pupils that hovered above him.

They were close together; their muscles tightening; their abs pressing; the tips of their noses brushing together as they breathed eachother's musty air into their choking throats. The mutant squeezed his eyes in ecstasy and uttered a moan above Steve's parted lips as the soldier shuddered for breath.

A symphony of hot, mewling breaths resounded an inch away from Steve's lips, and the soldier shuddered for air as he kneaded his hand through the mutant's silver locks, pulling Pietro's lips so they settled flush against his. The runner's lips were thick with sharp edges he could nibble and tug with smooth teeth.

The movement brought fog to the runner's mind, and for a split second he was oblivious to the smooth, full lips of the captain moving against his mouth; the dilation in those cyan blue eyes that inevitably fluttered shut as he moved his lips against him.

The soldier swept his tongue over the bottom lip of the runner, and the smaller man responded immediately, craning forward and invading the captain's mouth with his own slick tongue. The soldier's guttural moan vibrated between their mouths. An ache stirred low in the captain's stomach.

It was something that made him weaker under the mutant. It was the powerful legs that kept him pinned against the mattress; the bulging, throbbing pressure that radiated a heat against his groin and kneaded hard against his member with every tug that was made against him. It was the hard, fast way those lips were smothering his that made the captain's bruising hands ache for more skin to grope.

There was red creeping up the runner's pale skin, and Steve didn't notice. In the window of the door not twelve yards away hid the most beautiful face Pietro had ever laid eyes on. Her lengths of hair were wild, tangled with dirt and rubble but shaded with the color of sun rays in the morning sky. She was the new Avenger, still wearing a tattered X-Men uniform as she held gauze that leaked blood as it dripped from the edge of her plump mouth. The parted lips, the wide, emerald-green eyes that peered directly at Pietro's face. Her gaze was wide as two green moons.

Pietro moved to get off of the soldier, and the woman tuned in a brisk step. Steve lifted his back from the white hospital sheets. Pietro didn't make a move to fight the grip on his thigh. His body was rigid atop the captain, almost a statue in Steve's arms with hands that had themselves wrenched around the other's corded wrists in the silence.

Steve felt the mutant tense in his hold as he bowed his head into the crook of Pietro's sweaty neck. The iron grips on his forearms relaxed; the rigidity of those muscled legs dissipated into a trembling stiffness, comforting, warm 'round Steve's waist. With every moist kiss along the runner's neck, the silence in Steve's ear quickly became shuddering breaths that encouraged goosebumps along every inch of his own sunkissed skin.

Pietro was impatient. The chills; the slow, easy kisses Steve was sucking into his skin. He wanted him to get on with it already, and he pressed a kiss into the stronger man's shoulder to strangle a moan into Steve's wet flesh.

When the other man pulled his chest against the Captain America suit, Pietro hadn't been expecting the pleasure that followed the pressure of their groins together, or the groan he echoed as his teeth rushed to find the soldier's. Pietro hated himself for this. He hated the twitch of his groin at the tremble of Steve's torso; he hated the sensitivity and the pleasure of their groins churning against each other. A shudder quaked his body at the groan let into his ear, and smooth, heated teeth scraped hotly over the skin of his reddening lobe.

This wasn't right. This was wrong. He shouldn't be doing this. But unfortunately for Pietro's pride, there were reasons he wasn't stopping himself. Maybe it was the bulge that tinted his sweats; the fingers that were pulling the material down an inch with soft movements.

"Rogers," was the name Pietro breathed into the gap between their wet mouths. Their heads were tilted together, the captain's eyes closed in bliss as he worked his hand past the runner's sweats.

The both of them pressed into eachother's touch, reveling in the contact, their eyes squeezed shut and their sweaty skin a hot, powdery red.

The pleasure was growing heavier between Pietro's legs; warm, thick, scalding pleasure inside of him. His stomach wrung within itself, the pressure rising and twisting and growing until the pleasure was white-hot and they were both right_ there_ and they couldn't stand it; they couldn't take it anymore and white hair burrowed into the captain's tensing shoulders, muscles clenched into sweaty knots and teeth were grit heavily. Moisture flooded the fronts of sweaty clothing and lingered, spiking, flowing, dripping in powerful waves.

The silent air was broken with the men's strangled moans.

Pietro slowed against the soldier, who buried a hand in the disheveled white tendrils of hair with drunken fervor. The kiss Steve pressed to his mouth quickly opened to something more; something deeper that Pietro couldn't control this time. The runner's mind was in a haze too deep to allow him thoughts or feelings, or anything more. What little air he could breathe was air that scalded as it entered.

His hand clung to the sheets under the captain's shoulder, and the runner watched his crystal tears flow over the man's smooth cheek. It traced the outline of their swollen lips, slid past the barricade of their mouths. A strong hand cupped Pietro's chin, and his lips were pulled away.

Pietro felt wetness being thumbed from his cheek.

He felt the man beneath him vibrate with speech, and through the fogginess of his thoughts, a whisper strained through in the form of a silent question.

The girl appeared behind Pietro's closed eyes. The one in the X-Men uniform with the busted, plump pale lips. Something in Pietro wanted to wrap around her and steer her in the opposite direction. He was sound asleep too soon for the thought to linger.

* * *

**Anon: Thanks for the review. :)**


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